Retractors are probes used during medical procedures to provide the health care provider with controlled access to the patient and to assist with visibility of the area being treated. In general, a retractor has a control arm or blade portion that extends from a handle or base portion. The control arm or blade operably engages the area being treated, while the handle or base is used to position the control arm or blade as needed. The retractor can be hand-held by a health care provider or mounted to an examination table, operating table, or the like.
The shape of the retractor's blade portion often defines and limits its use. For example, a retractor's blade that is sized and shaped to fit down a patient's throat is often referred to as an intubation instrument or a laryngoscope. Similarly, specific use retractors, such as anoscopes and colposcopes, are retractors that have blades that are shaped to optimally engage specific areas of the patient.
Recently, efforts have been made to improve the effectiveness of some types of retractors by adding lighting and/or video systems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,827,178 to Berall (“Berall”) discloses mounting a camera in the vicinity of the distal end of the blade and a viewer mounted to the laryngoscope such that the practitioner has a simultaneous line of sight and camera view during insertion.
While such camera and lighting systems can improve the health care provider's viewing abilities of the patient, they have several drawbacks. For example, since most retractors must be sterilized prior to use, cameras, lights, and their related electronics that are secured to the retractor are regularly subjected to sterilization procedures. Over time, these procedures can tend to prematurely deteriorate these components thereby limiting their useful lives.
Similarly, since most retractors are monolithic structures having a blade that is sized and shaped for a single purpose, if a health care provider would like different use retractors to each have video and/or lighting systems, each type of retractor requires its own camera and/or lighting system to be mounted therein. Moreover, since blade sizes and shapes for a given use retractor, such as laryngoscopes, can vary, for example for use on adults and children, each different sized laryngoscope must have its own camera and/or lighting systems mounted thereto. Accordingly, despite the benefits associated with providing video and/or lighted retractors, the high number of cameras, lighting systems, their related electronic systems, and their related increased costs associated with maintaining them, significantly increases the overall costs of providing these systems to health care providers.
In addition, the camera system is out of service during cleaning cycles, which may impact its usefulness should an emergency need arise during the cleaning cycle.